


Faded pages

by onkoona



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, non DH complient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7094305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onkoona/pseuds/onkoona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus remembered the first day he walked into the ancient town of Lancaster, still wearing his teaching robes, having left his previous home of nearly 30 years. It had been tempting, but he had firmly resolved to look forward and not look back, and to forget what and whom he had left behind. </p>
<p>(for the Odd Jobs challenge)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faded pages

# Faded Pages

He opened the shop doors at 9:30 sharp, like always, and then he stepped down behind the cash register's desk and sorted through the muggle mail, like always. It was a muggle shop, so plenty of muggle mail was to be expected. What with the new Internet setup, orders had increased quite a bit over the last five years. And that was a good thing because when he had first started in the shop, the business had been ailing for a long time.

Severus remembered the first day he walked into the ancient town of Lancaster, still wearing his teaching robes and carrying the wrapped up £5,000 in his inside pocket. His feet had hurt considerably since he had walked all the way from where the Portkey had dropped him off on Hawthornthwaite Fell, after leaving his previous home of nearly 30 years. It had been tempting, but he had firmly resolved to look forward and not look back.

The beginning had been hard going. £5,000 is a lot of money but he quickly found out that it was not nearly as much as the same amount would have been in Galleons. He had arrived at night time and found that accommodation for a single male costs at least £30 per night; accommodation that consisted of a medium-sized room with a narrow bed, a tatty wardrobe, a small desk and wooden chair, and that he had to share the facilities with at least five other occupants of the building. One good thing was that breakfast was included in the price, as he found out the next day that meals could set him back between as much as £8 for a single plate.

In his very first few days in the lovely old town he came to the conclusion that sleeping in a Bed and Breakfast and going out for meals was going to blow through his money pretty quickly; even £5,000 would not last a year.

Those first few days he walked the streets of the muggle town, down shopping streets, with their muggle shops; pharmacists, retail clothing shop (with staggering prices), a shop with shining lights that sold muggle electronics (which were to him completely useless), a charity shop with less fancy clothes hanging on black plastic hangers and books and knickknacks laid out on white plastic shelves. It was one of those charity shops that Severus actually decided to enter first; he needed to buy muggle clothing, because his dark teaching robes stood out like a sore thumb among the multicoloured pedestrians in the street, and he was worried he might actually grab somebody's attention, which was the last thing that he wanted. No, it wouldn't do for him to be found here.

The charity shop turned out to have quite a large men's section. Most of the clothing were single pants or shirts or jackets, unmatching and unwanted, but in the more expensive section there were a few nice suits and that is where Severus bought his outfit; a dark blue suit with a suggestion of very thin stripes in the weave, combined with three shirts that in their colour would match the blue suit, and lastly, two ties that were the least horrible of those available on the rack, though not Severus' choice if he'd had the money to choose what he liked. He decided to not buy any shoes; the ones he wore from his former life were still serviceable and being black they fit the blue suit well enough; their design being universal enough not to stand out.

So outfitted, and some £40 lighter, he resumed exploring his New World, this muggle world. At first it looked like the place was full of glittering shallow trinkets only, but then he turned a corner on the High Street and there it was, a bookstore. It was like seeing a little bit of Heaven on Earth and Severus went straight for the open door, stepping inside, where he stopped and looked around and inhaled the slightly musty smell of old books.

The shop was wall-to-wall books, reaching all the way to the ceiling. In the middle of the space lower bookcases stood at an angle, creating a kind of maze you could browse through but Severus didn't need to browse, he knew exactly where he wanted to go. He scanned the space and found what he was looking for, off to the side and outside of the path the sunshine would make trough the shop's large front windows; the classics section, and that was where he headed. All the books on the old wooden shelves were butter yellow and natural brown and musty green and sedate red and burgundy. Some leather-bound some cloth-bound, all worn, the results of many years of human fingers rubbing against the spines just as he was doing now. Under his fingers slid Austin, Brontë, Dickens, Shakespeare. His finger stopped at a slim volume of Keats poetry, he selected it from the shelf and opened it up and read:

_O solitude! if I must with thee dwell,_  
Let it not be among the jumbled heap  
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,-  
Nature's observatory-whence the dell,  
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,  
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 

He spent most of that morning reading bits of his favourite books, all muggle of course, and he found himself returning after lunch to read some more. The shop’s proprietor didn't seem to mind that he was reading and not buying but at the end of the afternoon he did buy the volume of Keats and slipped it into his pocket so he could take it to read in his room; the room that was supposed to be his home from now on.

His feet found him wandering back to the bookstore the next day, and again he spent the morning there. As he read passages in his favourite books he couldn't help but putting each book back in its proper place where it hadn't been before. The shelves were in quite a disarray; customers must have looked at the books, then not put them back right and for whatever reason no one else had either, and Severus, who was after all a student of a strict school with an excellent librarian, could not help putting the books back as they should be, any more than he could help breathing.

That afternoon he perused the travelling books; glossy volumes on places he had never seen and had never had a chance to go to. Now he luxuriated in shifting through the heavy muggle photo pages depicting faraway places, far away peoples, all muggle. This section he divided up by location, starting in Europe, going east through the Middle East and Russia to China, Korea and Japan. Then on the next shelf he put all the books on the Americas, finishing off with Africa and Australia sharing the lowest but one shelve. He dedicated a whole shelf to atlases and maps, deciding that they should have their own section.

Severus was still so busy that afternoon rearranging the shelves that he did not realise the proprietor had walked up to him until he saw the man's leather shoes appear in his line of sight.

"Well, young man, you seem to know what you are doing," the elder man said. Severus felt much like he had when Madam Pince had caught him putting back books wrong in the Hogwarts library in his first week there; he could feel his face heat up as he scrambled to a standing position. Standing up he was taller than the proprietor by a good few inches, nonetheless the old man exuded enough presence for Severus to feel like a student again.

"I do apologise," he said, "I meant no harm."

"Oh, that's all right, young man," the old man smiled, his face wrinkling, giving him a jovial look, "It's nice to see someone taking an interest in my books. I'm Alistair Fergus," he said, sticking out his hand for Severus to take.

"Seth... Harrison", Severus said having to look quickly for a surname he could use here, and using the first name that came to mind.

They ended up talking about travel books for quite a while, Severus trying to give as little information about himself as he possibly could. He told the man he had been a teacher, but he quickly found he could not tell in which subject because, really, what did he know of muggle school subjects? So in the end he left it vague, just a teacher of some kind. If the man minded he didn't show it, thereby softening the guilt that Severus was feeling about his obfuscation. Again he bought a book, this time a small travel guide to the treasures of ancient Greece, before he left to go home to his desolate room. There he flipped through the book, sitting on his bed eating an egg and cress sandwich he had bought to serve as dinner. And he wondered if there was ever going to be more to life than this.

Things went the same for the next few days as Severus visited the shop, chatted with the proprietor, browsed books, rearranged shelves to his own liking, bough a single book each day, something small that cost under £2, before he bought pre-made sandwiches at the corner store, which he ate in his small room for dinner. On the fourth day the conversation between him and the proprietor went a little differently; in the previous talks Severus had settled on having been a Latin teacher, that being a subject that the proprietor was not that well versed in, so Severus felt safe to appropriate that profession, especially since he himself had done some extracurricular study of Latin to aid his spell craft earlier in life. He had implied he had been made redundant, well, the proprietor had come up with the term 'redundant'; Severus had not known it before, but it suited him well for this situation. And on that fourth day Mr Fergus, usually approaching any subject in a most roundabout and lengthy way, now came forward and started to talk about Severus' redundancy.

After holding a lengthy introduction about the concept of redundancy, which Severus let wash over him knowing the man was simply long-winded and Severus really had nothing better to do anyway, finally the man said, "If you are free, and you like my shop and you like the books and, well, maybe, if you're willing, I could use a hand here." The man must have seen the shocked look on Severus' face when he hastily continued, "I will pay you of course!"

The man was offering him a job, a job! It was the solution to all his problems; he would have something to do all day, he would have something to look forward to so his evenings would be less desolate, and he would get money to live on. Severus didn't know how fast to say 'yes', and five years later he was still there at the bookshop.

~HPHPHP~

Severus now lived in one of the rooms over the shop, that way he could keep an eye on Mr Fergus, who was in bed with a minor bout of pneumonia. The doctor had told Severus that as long as the fever didn't get any worse Mr Fergus could be tended to at home, in fact it would be better for the old gentleman to be in familiar surroundings. Maybe the doctor had said that having heard Severus speak of herbal medicine in a confident way, thereby being reassured that Mr Fergus was in good hands. Severus found that he didn't mind taking care of the old gentleman; it wasn't a very big chore. And Severus was happy to be around medicinal herbs, any herbs again after such a long time.

He had found, after he had rearranged the bookstore and its inventorying accounts that he was missing working with his hands. Potion making was one part reading and research and one part hands-on action, and he missed that. So when he had finished all the back work of the bookstore, he turned his mind to the pile of old volumes whose condition was still too good to throw out but not good enough to sell. That combined with his chance find of an instruction book, a course book from some college that taught book restoration. It had been an incomplete book set, but even just leafing through the first floppy volume had Severus' interest hooked. This was a hands-on profession, and it didn't seem very difficult to learn. Most of the techniques were old, so they would be in keeping with the to be restored books themselves. Severus recognised most of the materials used for book repair; leather parchment, cotton thread, cotton mesh, paper mash, oil paints, gold leaf, old-fashioned glues, he knew them all. And so one night after the shop closed he picked up one of the damaged books, the most damaged of the lot, and he set about learning how he could make it a functioning book again.

Occasionally he would run into a Wizarding book. At first he put them aside, but then when the pile grew to two feet tall, he decided to take a proper look at them, to look at his own past once more. First thing he noticed was that he could still feel the magic emanating from the volumes, some benign, some malignant. The latter he put aside and ultimately locked them in a cupboard so no one could accidentally touch them. He himself took all the precautions he could in handling them; since he had no Dragon-hide gloves or anything like that, he had found a pair of muggle motor racing gloves, thick ones with rubber on the palms and fingers. He knew he was taking a chance touching a malevolent book with only muggle protection, but his contact with each volume was limited, he would only move them into the cupboard and not open them or use them in any other way. After he had handled one or two of these kind of books he decided, that if this many were here in a muggle bookshop, he ought to return them to the Wizarding world. After all, that was where they belonged, evil or not; they should not end up in muggle hands.

So he resolved to have them sent to the goblins at Gringotts, letting them deal with it, even though it might put his anonymity at risk. He sent them off in a big crate, addressed to the bank's muggle postbox, paying the postage out of his own pocket, and thought nothing more of it; goblins were discretion itself, he should be safe enough still.

Imagine his surprise when not four weeks later he received a letter from Griphook himself. In it the goblin explained that he was just being a messenger and that all the details were added inside. Indeed there was a second envelope, and it contained a letter from Mrs Leadbetter requesting that Severus find her son employment. Severus remembered a Leadbetter as his student, a shy boy with only mediocre talents. As the head of Slytherin house he had done his best for the boy, and with some considerable extra tutelage he got him through his OWLs and his NEWTs. But the boy's name had been Ethelred Leadbetter and this letter was about an Engelbert Leadbetter; a brother maybe? The mother asked for Severus' help, and even though the boy hadn't been a Slytherin and therefore not his responsibility, Severus considered the matter and went to talk to Mr Fergus about it. They really could use another pair of hands around the shop.

And so Engelbert Leadbetter, known as Bertie, joined the Red Rose Bookstore. And over time the boy, a young man really, became very useful; he was willing to learn and it turned out he had an aptitude for manual crafts, and so Severus put him to work in the small book-restoring workshop he had started in the bookshop's old storeroom. It felt really good having a student again, and one that was willing to learn and was actually interested in the subject at hand. As the business grew they hired a part-time muggle who was adept at keeping the inventory paperwork up-to-date and also able to add a website for online mail order business. Neither Mr Fergus nor Severus had known anything about the Internet, only that they had heard it might be good to venture there, when one of their customers, a middle-aged lady who had a passion for romance novels and who also had a never ending parade of nieces and nephews, had recommended one of her nieces to Mr Fergus because the girl was, as the lady put it, always playing on the damn computer. Even though the girl had purple hair, wore black mascara and matching lipstick and also a skirt over her trousers, all black of course, she turned out to be quite gifted at running a web store for them. It was the web store combined with the new restoration workshop that started to see money coming in faster than it was going out, and Severus and Mr Fergus were both elated.

Severus found he enjoyed his new life. He had a good friend in Mr Fergus, a good pupil in Bertie who also gave him passable company during the day, and there was always something new coming from Alice, showing him a new part of the muggle world almost every day. And if he thought about his previous life once in a while, well, that was understandable. But he tried his best to forget all that; this was a good life after all.

~HPHPHP~

When Bertie arrived, after his customary "good morning, Mr Harrison", to which Severus gave his customary grunt, the young man moved straight on to the workshop. And when Alice arrived at 10:30 Severus left the shop to her, and, after making a detour upstairs to check on Mr Fergus, he joined Bertie in the back. There was much to do; four crates of non-magical Wizarding books had been delivered from Gringotts, or more precisely, through Gringotts, from some wealthy wizard who wanted his library updated and restored where necessary. The first time Severus had received a request from Gringotts to restore somebody's books, he had been worried. But further inquiry had convinced him that Gringotts had no clue as to who he really was, or were extremely circumspect about it; they acted like they were dealing with a Mr S. Harrison, of Lancaster, squib.

To receive magical books from the Wizarding world had become commonplace over the last year. They usually arrived with a self-unshrinking spell, a fact that Severus tried to not let bother him; after all it was good sense from the goblins' point of view, they knew that there were only squibs at the Red Rose Bookstore. But each time Severus triggered one of those unshrinking spells, it hurt just a little. He kept reminding himself that they needed the business more then he needed his pride in this, really, such a small thing. This was his life now after all.

Severus had joined Bertie in the workshop where Bertie was already working on collating and binding a set of notebooks; some memoir of a member of the Black family. It wasn't anyone Severus had ever heard of and the fact that the memoirs were here showed that this particular Black had not been a serious follower of the dark arts, or else the memoirs would have been cursed and sealed with deadly spells. On Severus' own table lay a muggle Bible, a Scottish edition from 1755, of which the spine had completely disintegrated. It would be hours of work restoring it, but Severus could see it was an important family heirloom; it had an entire family tree of the McNabs going back to the date of publication scribbled in the back pages.

Severus had just separated the sides sections from the back using a craft knife and he was about to cut away the old glue from a previous restoration, when he heard the shop’s bell ringing, signalling a customer in the main part of the shop. Walk-in customers were actually quite rare; usually there were one or two regulars that came in every day and a few more that came in every week or so, very rarely would they see a new face. So Severus let Alice deal with the customer, she was very familiar with the regulars and well able to sell a book to a stranger. It wasn't until footsteps moved from the shop part through the back and squeaked onto the wooden floors of the workshop that Severus looked up. And almost dropped his knife.

"Harry?" he asked, the question being completely redundant, since the figure standing in front of him was most obviously Harry Potter, now displaying a surprised face very much like his own.

"Severus? What are..?" Harry said and then trailed off, looking around at the small workshop. "How long...?"

"What are you doing here?" Severus interrupted him mid-question.

By Merlin's beard, how had Harry found him here? Severus cursed his trust in the goblins and in Gringotts, for putting him in the situation. He was about to start snarling at his former, well, whatever, when Harry spoke again.

"I'm, uh, I'm just helping out Hermione, she's starting Wizarding library, a proper one, and I want to give her the Black library which I inherited, but a lot of the books are cursed and those that are not are in such bad shape so..." he trailed off.

"That does not explain why _you_ are _here_ ," Severus said, emphasizing both the pronoun and the place, making Harry visibly cringe.

"I wanted to, well, I wanted to know if Red Rose Bookstore could handle the volume of books that need fixing. The store is quite famous for its restorations, you know. And Griphook highly recommended you to Hermione for Wizarding book restoring, said there was no better place anywhere," again he trailed off.

"I see," Severus said, and then fell silent.

"Severus," Harry started to say but then was interrupted by Bertie saying, "Mr Harrison, is it okay if I take lunch a little early?"

Severus waved him off with a, "yes certainly, don't make it too long," feeling a bit grateful that the boy gave him some privacy here. He waited until he heard the bell on the shop's door bell ring, signalling that Bertie had left the building, then he got up and walked over to close the connecting door between the shop and the workshop.

"I looked for you everywhere," Harry said the moment Severus had turned around to face him again.

"Why bother," Severus said, walking back to his place and retaking his seat. "How large a volume of books are we talking about, Mr Potter," he said, giving Harry his best professional look.

"Don't mind that right now," Harry said as he stepped up to Severus' desk. The young man put his hands on top of the desk and leaned forward. "I've missed you so much!" he said.

"Well, I didn't," Severus said, feeling something shatter inside when he saw the crushed look at his statement.

Harry stepped back from the desk, seeming to draw in on himself. "Uhr," he began, "Hermione was talking about at least a hundred books that needed work, is that okay?"

Severus considered this; 100 books at a minimal restore cost of £25 each would mean £2500 coming in, or more if the work was more complicated. "It would be dependent on the state of the books, Mr Potter," Severus said.

"Of course," Harry said and Severus could see the young man had some trouble keeping his voice flat and professional. The thought both pleased and annoyed him at the same time. Harry had messed up his own chances, and Severus was not about to him give a break.

"That's why I brought samples," Harry said reaching inside his cloak and pulling out a miniaturised box. He stepped forward, put it on the desk and tapped it to enlarge it. "Hermione put this box together to give you some indication," the boy said, "these are the typical sort of books that are in the collection. All the cursed books and at-risk books have been removed; it should be safe enough."

Severus gave that statement a grunt as answer and sat forward in his chair when Harry had moved back to stand in the open space before the desk again. Severus pulled out the volumes, he briefly considered offering Harry a chair, but he was not feeling generous at that particular moment so he just ignored the boy as he sorted out the books into three piles: needing little work at first glance, needing more work at first glance, and books that were obviously almost dead.

Next he perused the piles more closely, shifting some of the books around between piles and then he sat back and said, putting his hand on the first pile, "These can be restored quite easily, that should cost about £25 per book." He then moved his hand to the middle pile and said, "These require a lot more work; the cost would be between £50 and £75." Again he moved his hand to the last pile and said, "These are in incredibly bad shape, only if they are important volumes should you consider having them restored; the cost will be well over a hundred pounds per book." He looked up expectantly at Harry, wanting to see the boy's reaction to his prices.

"That's fine, money is not really an issue, the Black fortune is huge and it’s difficult to do some good with it," he trailed off again. Severus felt a sudden stab of anger; to be so cavalier with money, something that he had been lacking his whole life and he had to pinch every penny even now; it galled.

"Alright," he said, not wanting to drop his faux-professional air, "we can handle about three boxes of books like these per week. Send us two more and we will get on with it for this week, and send us more next Tuesday and we will send back the results. Good day, Mr Potter," he added when he saw Harry start to interject. He turned his attention to the books, completely ignoring Harry's departure. It wasn't until the shop’s bell rang, indicating that Harry had truly left, that he was able to exhale.

~HPHPHP~

A over the next few weeks the boxes came in and Severus and Bertie took care of them before sending them out again. With them came an influx of money that the shop desperately needed, but to Severus' dismay it also came with the weekly visit of Harry Potter to the store. Every Tuesday the infuriating boy would show up, and he would try to draw out Severus by making conversation, telling him unwanted details of a world he was no longer part of. Severus tried his best to shut him down every time but it became harder and harder to do; he was also getting comments from Bertie and Alice and even Mr Fergus about his seemingly rude behaviour towards what they believed was a good customer. Of course Bertie knew who Harry Potter was, being a wizard-born squib. And Bertie was not a fool; he quickly figured out who Mr Harrison, his boss, really was. One time after Harry had drooped off, after dropping off three more boxes, Bertie called him on his behaviour.

The moment Bertie had let on that he knew who Severus was, Severus told him in no uncertain terms that that life was over and that he never wanted to hear of it again. Severus could tell Bertie was shocked, but he couldn't help shutting the friendly boy down; Severus had lost too much and he just couldn't handle being reminded of it.

And so for weeks Severus dreaded Tuesday mornings; being forced to deal with the past on a weekly basis was starting to make his life feel like it used to when he'd have to report the Dark Lord’s plans to the Headmaster; as if he was being slowly parboiled.

For some weeks Bertie had not pushed the subject, but then one day he spoke up and said, "Can't you just make up somehow?" Severus put down the tool he was using and he was about to start berating Bertie when the young man spoke again. "Look, he comes in every week, and all he wants to do is talk to you."

"I have nothing to say to him," Severus said with a sigh, knowing Bertie meant well and didn't deserve to get his head bitten off for being concerned. But Severus was not about to give in, all the same. He picked up the gauging tool again to work on the leather of one of the bigger Wizarding tomes, and started working the aged brown surface with considerably more force than necessary.

~HPHPHP~

He tried giving Harry the silent treatment. He tried simply not being there on Tuesdays. He tried being overly civil with the young man. But when he was silent Harry would just keep talking, when he wasn't in on Tuesdays Harry would show up on Wednesdays, and when he tried cold civility Harry would plead with him for some time alone to talk.

In the end it was Mr Fergus who convinced Severus to give Harry his chance to talk. Mr Fergus, who knew nothing of Harry Potter, had apparently seen the young men leave the shop crying one Tuesday morning. Severus internally cursed Mr Fergus for being a soft touch, and himself for being an even softer touch for letting Mr Fergus' sentiment talk him into taking Harry to the tea salon next door.

~HPHPHP~

Mrs Nolan's tea's salon, at 11 AM on a Tuesday, was all but empty, but still Severus ushered Harry to a round table at the back, out of the line of sight of the counter, and behind a pillar, hoping that so situated, their private conversation would remain private. Moments after they had sat down Mrs Nolan arrived, ready to take their order. Neither Severus nor Harry ordered anything to eat; Severus because he usually had something sweet later in the day, and he guessed that Harry didn't want anything because he was nervous; Severus could feel it radiating off him. So he only ordered a pot of tea for two.

He sighed. "What is it that you wanted to say," he asked, looking at the table, his fingers lining up the cutlery neatly out of nervous habit.

"I've missed you so much," Harry said in such a tone that it made Severus look up into Harry's watery green eyes. For a moment Severus was mesmerised by the two green orbs. Yes, he had missed the presence of this remarkable young man as well; their separation had nearly destroyed him, but...

"I can't deal with this," he said, getting up from the table. He started forward, heading out of the salon, when his hand was grabbed and his motion halted.

"No, don't go," Harry pleaded, hanging on to Severus' hand. Severus tried to go on, or at least make a pretence, but then he let Harry draw him back to the table. "Please," Harry pleaded once more, "please don't go, please just talk to me for a while?"

Severus sat back down, but he pulled his hand away from Harry's grasp, instead he put it into his lap where it joined the other one and he trained his eyes where they were both clasped and wrung under the cover of the chintz tablecloth.

"I have nothing to say," he said, forcing his eyes cowardly to stay down; he didn't want to see how Harry felt about any of it.

Just then Mrs Nolan arrived with the tea, and the only sound that was heard was the clanking of the china as it was moved from the tray to the table. "Enjoy your tea now dears," Mrs Nolan said, before walking off and leaving the table in silence.

The clock ticked in the silence for long minutes, while Severus kept his head down, pointedly not looking at Harry.

"I want you back," Harry said, shattering the silence.

"And I want my magic back," Severus spat, jumping up, making the table rattle, and the tea pot wobble ominously, before storming out of the salon.

~HPHPHP~

His heart thumped in his throat as he almost ran back to the shop, nearly kicking in the door when it didn't open fast enough for him. He rushed around the corners of the bookshelves and picked up speed on his way to the workshop where, once he was inside, he slammed the door behind him, making Bertie jump behind his desk at the sound and the action. He gave Bertie a withering look and the young man thought better of saying anything, instead putting his head down back to his work and trying to look very small. Severus stopped at his desk, pulled the chair from behind it, slamming it down so he could sit on it. He took one of the big books that was in the in-pile and he rammed it down on the out-pile for no reason whatsoever other than to prevent the anger that was burning in his gut to turn into a scream trying to get out. All the anger and frustration he had been feeling for the last five years came out and he was very tempted to pick up another book and hurl it at the window, very very tempted. He sat in his chair, his back to his colleague, listening to his heart going 90 miles an hour, trying to calm down when heard the doorbell jingle; somebody entered the store. Then a moment later the workshop door opened and Severus' heart started beating faster still because there stood Harry.

Behind Severus, Bertie scrambled to his feet diving for the door, going through it and closing it behind Harry, who had his eyes trained on Severus, leaving them alone.

"I'm sorry, this is not what I wanted," Harry said, sounding forlorn. "This..."

"It's not what you wanted?!" Severus jumped up again, this time getting that heavy tome ready to throw. He lifted it, fully intending to let fly and screamed, "It's not what you wanted?! What about what I wanted!?" At that he aimed the book and threw it at Harry's head.

"Subsisto," Harry commanded, now holding his wand out, and the book hovered motionless in the air halfway between Severus and Harry. Harry flicked his wand and the book started to glide down to the ground where it lay still. Severus was seething with fury. "How could you take that from me!" he screamed, spittle flying.

"I had no choice," Harry said, sounding regretful. "He was torturing you through the Mark, and when he died, he would have taken you with him, like he did all the other Death Eaters, and I was not going to let that happen," he added.

For a long moment Severus didn't know how to answer that, and apparently that was long enough for Harry to come to his own conclusions.

"You wanted to die?" At Harry’s tone Severus looked up, Harry's eyes were wide with shock, and Severus felt all this anger disappear; wearily he sat back down on his chair.

"In a world free of the Dark Lord, Death Eaters have no right to survive; people would still fear his return through his disciples, or one of them deciding to become the next Dark Lord. It would never end." Severus sighed.

"But you would never do such a thing! You, of all people, have worked too hard to get rid of him!" Harry exclaimed, taking the two steps back over to Severus' desk.

"It doesn't matter; people would forever fear that I might someday."

"And you would let that overrule what we had?"

Severus hesitated; he really needed to put a stop to this, and he knew what he was going to say would be cruel, but better rip the plaster off all at once, than prolong the agony. "Potter, what we had was just sex, nothing more," he said.

"Just sex? It wasn't to me! I thought what we had would last, that it would be my future, our future!" Harry's tone had gone up, clearly showing the boy's distress. It had its impact on Severus as well; his heart ached, for the boy, for himself, the future they didn't have.

"We never had a future, just a destiny, and at that time nothing else could be allowed to mattered to me," he said.

"Didn't I love you enough?" Harry pleaded, sounding perplexed. He moved so close that he was leaning over the desk, almost invading Severus' space. The comment made Severus look up; that was not what he wanted to imply, at all.

"That's not it, Harry, I just knew it couldn't last; I'm a Death Eater, that can never change, and as such I don't deserve anyone's love," he said, trying to be reasonable, trying to explain. But instead of understanding he saw the grief in the green eyes turn to anger.

"I get to decide that!" Harry all but yelled as he rounded the desk, grabbing the back of Severus' chair and spinning it around before leaning over and saying, "After all we went through I deserve some happiness, we deserve some happiness!" With each part of his statement, Harry rattled Severus' chair, until Severus pushed him off.

"And what about my magic? That should have been my decision," Severus said trying to retain the tone of reasonability. "As a redeemed Death Eater I might have had some respectability, or at least grudging respect; as a squib, what am I? An object of ridicule? A target for vengeance? Or revenge? Without my magic I'd rather be dead, before they kill me." Severus could hear the desperation in his voice, the desolation.

"You have respectability! Even missing from our world, you are still honoured as a recipient of an order of Merlin, first-class. Sev, over the last five years they have even honoured you at Remembrance Day, together with Dumbledore and all the others! No one wants to ridicule or hurt you, and if they tried they'd have me to reckon with! I have money enough to make our lives anything we want them to be! Please come back, please!"

"And what would I be good for if I did? I know nothing other than potions and spells, which I can never again use. What of my pride, what of my independence? Do you expect me to become a kept man? Funded by Black's fortune? Never!"

Harry actually smiled at that, "I guess not," he said. "But that doesn't mean we can't have a life together." He waved a hand around and added, "You seem to be doing rather well here; I could join you. You don't by any chance have a vacancy? Window cleaner? Paper shredder? Deck swabber? I'll take anything, really," he said, his smiling face turning more serious.

"You would give up the Wizarding world for me?" Severus suddenly felt hope flood him, for the first time since they had made the final plans for the Dark Lord's demise, a demise he had never expected to outlive. It left him feeling hot, and he just knew his face must be showing it.

"In a heartbeat," Harry said, his face perfectly serious.

~HPHPHP~

As it so happened, Harry never did swab any decks at the store, or shred any paper, nor did he ever clean the windows. The only manual labour he ever did there, apart from carrying Wizarding books in and out of the workshop and take them to and from the Free Dumbledore Memorial Wizard and Non-Wizard Library, was to cast a whole bunch of permanent warming spells around Mr Fergus' living and bedroom, and more spells to take draughts out of the old building. All at Severus' request, of course. That being the only things Severus' stubborn pride would allow Harry to do for them.

Of course, he couldn't prevent Harry from buying the building next door. And quite honestly, Severus did not object too loudly when Harry suggested he move there with Harry, to live in the rooms above the shop part of that building.

In the time that Severus had taken over the day-to-day running of the bookshop, he had been keenly aware of the house next door. Some research had revealed that in olden days the two houses had been one, an inn with a large social space downstairs and with many rooms upstairs. Severus had so wanted to acquire the place and give the bookstore more space while getting the workshop some proper space of its own, not crammed in a windowless back room. But the shop's finances, even with the new businesses, would not allow it. And when he found out that the bookshop's own premises were heavily mortgaged already, Severus had dropped the idea, as he had so many other pipe dreams before it.

But now the Red Rose Bookstore could expand, and in time, it became a place synonymous with craftsmanship and integrity. And the city of Lancaster became proud of the Messrs Evans and Harrison, for their community spirit and generous monetary gifts to various community projects, most notable the council's literacy program.

If there was speculation on Mr Evans' source of income, neither Severus nor Harry ever heard of it, directly or indirectly. Neither did Harry or Bertie heard of any evidence that the Wizarding world knew of Severus' whereabouts. To them, Severus was a (probably) dead war hero, and Harry was a reclusive bachelor, only ever seen in the daytime, almost always in company of Ms Granger or a Weasley or three and usually out on Library business. No one knew where he lived; the scuttlebutt was that he had moved to his parents' house and had put it under a Fidelius; thereby making it impossible to find.

Severus knew, of course, exactly where Harry was in the evenings; with only a minor Glamour and just changing his signature round specs for a modern muggle square set, Harry became Harry J. Evans the moment he entered Lancaster town and joined one Seth Harrison, shop co-owner and master book restorer. And one unremarkable evening, about a year after Harry had walked into the workshop, just after they had sat down for dinner of soup, shepherd's pie and a treat of ice cream, Severus realized that his life was pretty good and that thoughts of the future no longer depressed him. In fact, quite the opposite; there would be a bed to be shared that night, and every night!

-The End-

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